TURNING APPREHENSION INTO CURIOSITY
TURNING APPREHENSION INTO CURIOSITY
Galloping down the beach with the wind in your hair is such a fantasy for many people, yet for some, the trip to the beach can turn into a non-fun event where you wished you'd worn shoes and your horse is petrified of the waves.
But there is a way to do it and get closer to your fantasy if you follow the approach of my good friend and excellent horsewoman, Fiona Brown from Grafton, NSW.
Galloping along the beach with the wind in her hair is definitely something Fiona loves to do, but she is smart about it and deeply understands horses.
Sure, you can get a horse obedient by making it do things by giving it no option. But behaviour created this way is laced with tension, prone to blow-ups, and not necessary.
Horses are extraordinary and we can get them confident with many things if we set them up.
This is what Fiona did with the young horse she is bringing on, and she posted her process on her group “Horse Harmony”, and with her permission, I have borrowed it to show you how it's done!
Firstly, Fiona has made BJ’s foundation solid at home and out on trails, but he had never before seen the beach.
Next, Fiona picked a great spot, Cordini Beach, that has a big track nearby with a great surface where she walked, trotted, and cantered BJ until he felt really relaxed.
Then she got off and together with another beach-savvy confident horse, Ashley, she took him in hand to look at the beach and waited at each stage until his apprehension turned into curiosity.
Fiona never forced BJ into the water but let him process the sand and the waves at his chosen distance for the time he needed to work out it was no threat. She had a nice long lead and let him investigate the beach through his sensory system. The presence of Fiona and Ashley helped bridge the new environment to BJ.
“Bridge”, is a word Kerry Thomas (herd dynamics/sensory soundness) uses to describe how the horse connects with their environment and how we can facilitate them habituating and working out they are safe. Or we can “block” that from happening because we fail to let them go through their processing sequences.
When the horse fails to get curious and process, they will hold that tension between themselves and the environment.
After BJ worked out the beach was okay in hand, she then went and got on him and started the whole process again, that she originally did in hand, under saddle.
It was a very successful adventure to the beach because she had prepared BJ and introduced him to the environment thoughtfully.
As Fiona describes, “we need to take into account how he feels about the beach, not focused on that fantasy I have of galloping down the beach with the wind in my hair - that will come one day.”
Thank you to Fiona for letting me share this and I hope it helps keep peoples dreams alive about things they would love to do with a horse.
